Tag Archives: Word

Apologies for not posting more regularly about my writing this week. Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been doing. All words are for Dragon’s Above – chapter 1.

Tuesday, 3rd September – 299 words

Wednesday, 4th September – 371 words

Thursday, 5th September – none! I did do some stuff for the Alt Hist website instead – posting an interview with Priya Sharma, one of the contributors to Issue 5.

Friday, 6th September – 144 words

Saturday, 7th September – 76 words – we had someone over at the weekend, so pretty difficult to write!

What I am finding a bit disappointing this week is that my word count per day is going down. This seems to be partly because I am often only doing a single session a day and leaving it at that. Partly I think that’s explained by having a lot of work on at the moment, but also I think I need to be a bit tougher with myself and force myself to hit a target of at least 500 a day.

I promise to do better this week!

Reading

Finished How to Read a Novel. Not the book I was expecting, but a good read nevertheless and inspires one to read more novels! Still reading A Feast for Crows (which I have been calling Feast of Crows by mistake in previous blog posts!) I am not sure what to think of this book. The writing as ever with GRR Martin is great, but the characters don’t particularly seem to be going anywhere (I am half way through). There’s stuff that they are doing, but none of them are in particular danger as far as I can work out, and I am left thinking so what. I’m hoping it will pick up a bit soon.

I was away for the weekend and fairly busy on Friday getting ready to go away so didn’t have time to do a post. I did manage to do some writing, however. So here’s a quick summary:

Friday, 23rd August – 420 words on the start of a SF short story called Trial by Dream. I have a vague idea where this is going, the title is a clue, but otherwise I’m writing into the dark pretty much. But it’s fun!

Saturday, 24th August – nothing! We were out for most of the day, so simply didn’t have time

Sunday, 25th August – this was a travel day so actually did quite a bit of writing – nearly all of it in the car. I did a puny 55 words on Trial by Dream and 574 words on a new writing in the dark project called Dragons Above. The idea behind this one is that it will be a fantasy war themed short novel. The intro of the novel features a dwarf on Anti-Dragon Artillery duty. Loving writing this and looking forward to doing some more.

In total 629 words on Sunday, so a good day for me.

Monday, 26 August – still on holiday so things were fairly busy, but I still managed to get in 177 words – all on Trial by Dream. That’s the problem with writing two things at once – one project can slide a bit. I think I’m going to finish off Trial by Dream first (its going to be a fairly short short story) and then get into Dragons Above a bit more.

Tuesday, 27th August – another travel day, but less opportunity to write. This time did 279 fairly fun words on Trial by Dream – its interesting to see how the setting and the story is developing. I also did a bit of work on tinkering with prices and blurbs on some of my titles on Amazon and other platforms – Lulu, Smashwords and Kobo.

Should be more regular posts for the foreseeable future now!

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Inspired by Dean Wesley Smith’s posts Writing in Public, I thought it would be cool (and possibly motivating for me) to write regular updates on my own daily writing, and general publishing and reading experiences. Really what a blog was about back in the day – an actual diary of what I have done each day and collection of my thoughts.

So here goes on Day 1!

I’m currently finishing off a short story called Time’s Arrow. It’s an alternate history piece set in 1415 at the Battle of Agincourt. I’m planning to send it out to magazines when it’s finished to see if I can get it published in a pro market. If not I’ll self-publish it myself. I have been struggling with it a bit and had quite a long hiatus, but recently I have worked out a way to get back in the groove. One of my main writing problems is finding enough time. Usually the only realistic slot I get is first thing in the morning, but if I am too tired to get up at 6 am I have a problem. Writing in my lunch hour at work is problematic. I don’t feel comfortable sitting and writing fiction in an open plan office. There’s a park nearby, but sometimes difficult to get a bench to sit on and scribble.

The alternative that I came up with last Friday was to just use my iPhone. Specifically I’m using the Pages app and just adding to a Word document on that. Initially I thought this was madness, but it’s actually working quite well. I tend to go quite fast when I’m writing so can quite easily knock off 100 to 150 words or so in 5-10 minutes, which is about the time it takes for Outlook to load in the morning or while I’m waiting for a tea to brew. About 3-5 sessions of that a day and I’m easily at my daily goal of 500 words a day.

So that’s what I did today. 3 sessions and that took me to 562 words. I’m near the end of the story I think – just over 4,000 words so hopefully I will finish it this week – it’s been hanging around far too long!

Other things I have done today include:

Reviewing two submissions for Alt Hist – one got declined, the other went into the Maybe pile

Working out why Alt Hist 2 is listed at the price of $2.99 on Amazon and not $6.99. Turns out I mistakenly put it up on Google Play at $2.99 ages ago. I have now since rectified the mistake, but will probably take a few weeks for Amazon to change.

Followed a few people who followed me on Wattpad and sent them messages.

Started on Feast of Crows. Enjoyed the prologue and the first chapter – both with new characters which was a bit strange to start with. I haven’t read from this series for a while so I was looking forward to being reacquainted with old favourites. That will happen soon, I’m sure.

Aiming to finish reading Sweet Justice (a collection of Judge Dredd short stories) later this evening.

Sometimes you have to start hitting the keys to remember how fun writing can be. For some reason just getting to that point can be hellish and involves a ton of prevarication, but when you start putting one word after another you suddenly remember that it is not a chore and that creation is inspiring and joyful.